Knights, Kings and Sparrows
by BlueIris08
Summary: Sam's struggles with his faith and his fears about his future come to a head in a spiritual crisis brought on by the events of 'Heaven and Hell.' Alternate ending to the episode; focuses on Sam, Dean, and Castiel.


_**"Knights, Kings and Sparrows"**_  
**Title**: "Knights, Kings and Sparrows"  
**Rating**: R for language  
**Pairings/characters**: Sam, Dean, Castiel. Genfic.  
**Word Count**: 5300  
**Episode/Spoilers**: "Heaven and Hell," with general references to other Season 4 episodes.  
**Summary**: "'Let him speak,' Castiel commanded, like they didn't all know he couldn't shut Sam up with anything less than a tranquilizer gun and a roll of duct tape. Maybe the only surprise about Sam's meltdown was that it hadn't happened sooner." Alternate ending to the demon/angel showdown scene in 'Heaven and Hell.'

* * *

"Don't call Dean that," his brother interjected as Uriel opened his mouth to spit the familiar insult in his face. "He's not, and you know it."

Uriel wheeled on Sam while Castiel looked over to him with mild curiosity. "He's not what, boy?" Uriel demanded.

"A monkey. He's created in God's image, just like me," Sam pronounced. "Just like that vessel you're wearing now. You hate it, don't you?"

'_Only Sam_,' he thought. Only Sam would argue theology with an angel. Only Sam would argue theology to _piss off_ an angel. Correction—only the Sam of the past few months would do it.

Uriel stuffed his hands into his pockets. "I suffer it with patience."

"You _suffer_ it because you have no choice," Sam responded. "No free will, like we have. For all you know, it's an honor to take on our form."

Only Sam could _succeed_ in pissing off an angel with theology. He watched his brother with a trace of pride while Castiel's brow furrowed slightly.

Sam went on as if he and Uriel were the only ones in the room. "You've never really thought about it. It's not in your nature," he declared. "Angels were created to understand, not to reason. That's why a couple monkeys and a fallen angel outsmarted you—."

An anxious hitch too faint for anyone else to hear tugged at Sam's voice as he caught sight of something past Uriel's shoulder, then snapped his focus back to the angel's face. He followed Sam's eyes to see a movement in the corner—Ruby staggering, dazed, to her feet. '_Get out_,' he mouthed at her. She nodded shakily, clutching her arm over the gash across her abdomen, and he flinched in empathy as he remembered the same burning cuts in his own flesh.

Noticing the wince, Uriel looked to see her limping for the door. "Sympathy for demons now, Dean?" he sneered. "Maybe I'll go put it out of its misery."

Sam's jaw clenched. Motioning at his brother to stay put and keep his trap shut, he moved between the angel and Ruby. "Why? You think killing her will help you grow a pair?"

Uriel's face turned ugly—uglier—and he took a step forward. He might have seen Castiel gesture minutely at his partner right before he stopped, but it could have been that the angel was just distracted by Sam plastering on a smile bratty enough to make a nun cross the street to slap it off his face.

"We know what human _reasoning_ leads you to protect her, Sam, but why does he?" Uriel demanded. "Do you suppose he covets his brother's whore?"

The creak of rusty hinges signaled that Ruby had made it to the relative safety of outside. Sam covered his relief by lobbing another volley at Uriel. "Dean doesn't covet _anything_ I have," he said. "Do you?"

"Even _that_"—Uriel jerked his head in his direction—"knows better than to want the filth in your veins. Why would I?"

"You know why. Both of us can do what only angels should be able to—cast out demons without rituals or exorcisms," Sam said, soft and arrogant. "But I could have taken her out from here."

'_You couldn't have_' went loud and unsaid. Castiel's face darkened, and _he_ was the one to worry about, not Uriel.

"Sam, don't taunt the psycho angel," he told his brother.

Uriel shot him a look blacker than any he'd given Sam. "You defy God while I obey him," the angel growled. "And far more than that separates you from me."

"That's right. Free will and reason." Sam ratcheted up the smugness. "Anything else? Because we're fighting on the same side, you know. And yet, you destroy lives while I save them."

"Sam!"

The cracking boards above their heads shook. "Listen to your brother, boy," Uriel blustered, "or I will—"

"Strike me down?" Sam mocked. "No, you won't, because you don't have that authority. Someone's afraid that you'll lose Dean if you kill me, aren't they?"

The planks shook harder.

"And he's the one you really hate," Sam pushed. "You have to _suffer_ me to live, me, whose pollution gives me a power of the angels, so that he can lead you."

Castiel whipped his head around to catch his eyes. His icy stare said plain as day, '_Stop your brother, or I will_.'

"Sammy, shut up!" he hissed.

Sam threw him the 'talk to the hand' gesture. "He can't control me," he told the angel. "But you'll have to obey him, won't you?"

Uriel drew his clenched fists from his pockets, and yeah, Sam had hit whatever angels had instead of nerves. "Of course he can't control you," he sneered. "The swaggering ape cannot even control his own lusts and vices."

"And he can choose to indulge them. You can't." The smirk on Sam's face as he glanced up at the rattling timbers was eerily familiar…_Meg_, he remembered. It was the same smirk Sam had worn when the demon possessing his body had broken the holy sigils trapping her.

"Five centuries ago, a monkey wrote that God favored humans above the angels because he gave us the power to choose what we become," Sam went on, oblivious to the cold rushing around them as if Castiel was drawing in all the energy from the room. "Do you hate us for that, Uriel? Or do you imagine being led by that 'swaggering ape' and think that maybe, just maybe, the Morningstar was ri—"

"Samuel, be silent!" rang through the room. Sam jumped at the sheer force of the words, and for once in his life, shut up. "Go, Uriel," Castiel ordered. "Leave him to me."

Snarling, the other angel vanished. Castiel rounded on Sam, who paled and stepped backwards.

"Castiel," he began, starting toward his brother's side. It—and that was the first time in months that he'd thought of the angel as 'it' instead of 'he'—held up his hand. He stopped dead in his tracks, understanding for the first time what it meant to be 'awestruck,' as Castiel backed Sam against the wall. Sam had several inches on the vessel, but the angel was somehow far taller.

"I will strike you dead where you stand, Samuel, before I let you goad one of my brothers into destruction." The hoarse voice was no louder than ever, but the air trembled with it. "And make no mistake, I do have that authority."

"You had to know about him." Sam flattened his palms and shoulders against the wood as if he was leaving himself no room to cringe. "He hates me, fine, you can all hate me, but you had to know how much he hates Dean."

Invisible wings beat the air. "Fate may have given you power over demons, Sam Winchester," Castiel blazed, "but never presume to think that you can tutor an angel of the Lord. I knew about Uriel."

Sam swallowed. "You did?"

"Just as I knew that your insolence stemmed from your fear for your brother. And that, Samuel," it rasped, "is the _only_ reason I have not returned you to the dust whence you came."

Sam's pallid face went dead white. "I'm sorry," he said, fighting to keep his chin up under Castiel's bug-on-a-pin scrutiny. "I didn't mean—I was just making it up as I went along. I'm sorry."

"It does not bode well that the words came to your mind at all. But…" Castiel tilted his head and nodded, as if finding whatever he was looking for in Sam's face. "Your apology is accepted. Much can be forgiven if it is done for love, though not everything. You would both do well to remember that."

Sam slumped with relief as the angel stepped back. "I and I alone will deal with Uriel," Castiel said, seemingly returning to his host's size with another flutter of unseen wings.

He found his voice again. "How?" he asked.

"By reasoning with him, of course. Angels are endowed with as much reason as humans are, and more wisdom." Something that might have been grief flickered across Castiel's usually impassive face. "And we are not without will. If we were, none of us could fall."

Sam peeled himself off the wall. "I knew that. Like you said, I was just goading him."

"You knew?" the angel repeated. He readied himself to run interference if Sam had stepped in it again, but Castiel actually chuckled. "Minds even better than yours have sought to understand the angels for millennia, Sam Winchester. You can't. It's not in your...nature."

Sam winced. "Sorry."

"There's no sin in seeking knowledge about God's heavenly creations. Only in believing you have attained it," Castiel answered. "And…"

The angel sat down on a bale of hay and rested his elbows on his knees, lines that would have meant fatigue in a human crossing his face. Maybe angels couldn't eat or drink or screw but could still feel exhaustion. That would suck, but it fit with what they knew about God.

"And the truth is, I didn't realize the depth of Uriel's…resentment of Dean." Castiel admitted. "I will keep my brother on a shorter leash, Samuel, but _you must stay on yours_."

"Please tell me that's some kind of metaphor," he interjected as Sam's face clouded over.

Unblinking, puzzled eyes turned to him. "Of course."

"He means," Sam translated, "that they think the Boy King will obey his big brother even if he doesn't take orders from angels." Sam clenched and relaxed his fists, shoving his automatic rebellion back down. "Meaning no disrespect, heaven should know that I respect my brother, I trust his judgment, I follow his lead. But I haven't taken orders from anyone since the day I became a _man_."

"I believe that, Sam." Castiel answered. The tiredness on his face deepened a little before his eyes wandered off to stare at nothing.

After a moment his brother gave him a baffled look; he shrugged back. The silence might be awkward, but Anna was getting a pretty good head start while her pursuer hung out with them and communed with dust motes.

"Castiel, would you answer a question for me?" Sam ventured eventually.

The angel returned from his woolgathering. "If I can, yes."

"Do other angels have it in for Dean too?"

Castiel pondered the question at length. He'd once heard that Eskimos—'_Inuit_,' Sam said—had nine different words for snow. The angel, on the contrary, had only one blank face, one head-tilt, and one blink to show pondering, contemplation, curiosity, and six other kinds of thought processes. Nothing approaching Uriel's fluid use of the full range of his host's face and body language. The thought had crossed his mind that Castiel might not be the shiniest halo in the heavens, but he figured it was more likely that the angel didn't care enough about the expressions to learn them. He'd probably picked up how to show nine kinds of menace instinctively.

"They do not," Castiel told Sam finally. "The others respect Dean for his sacrifice and for…what he might become. But they neither like nor dislike him because they don't know him." His lips twitched a little. "Which is just as well. Many of them would not find him amusing."

He shrugged. "What can I say? I'm an acquired taste."

Castiel blinked. "You should both know, though," he continued after a beat, "that Uriel walks at one line of angelic nature, but I walk on the other. Most of us are more…dispassionate. And not all of them are sure about you."

"Not sure that I'm the right guy for the battlefield promotion?" he asked.

"More than that. Leader or not, Dean, you are a hunter of rare skill, and we'll need every hunter in this battle. But your faith is questionable at best." Castiel was speaking to him, but looking at Sam. "I have no doubt that you'll remain on our side, but if there were ever fear that your loyalties might be divided, one of the others might...remove you from the equation. The stakes are too high to risk losing someone so talented to the other side."

"Why would they be divid—?" he started before he caught side of Sam's stormcloud face. _Oh_.

"So the thinking goes, if you threaten me he'll behave, and if you threaten him, I'll behave." Sam's voice rose. "Is that all we are to—?" He gestured upwards. "Bargaining chips and hostages?"

"No." The angel seemed puzzled by Sam's denseness. "Don't ask me anything else, Sam. I've said all I can."

Sam snorted. "Then let's just go our separate ways and hope we don't run into each other again," he said, a hard edge on his tone.

Castiel studied him. "What are you afraid of losing, Sam Winchester," he asked calmly, "if you continue to walk with angels?"

Sam was silent for a long moment. "My faith," he said eventually in a thick voice. "You said that God wants me to just let people die, and I'm trying like hell to deal with it. Hunters are your knights, you want Dean to be a rook or maybe a queen—"

"Dude!" he yelped.

Sam rolled his eyes but shrugged an apology. "And the chess pieces don't need to know why they have to stand and watch pawns get sacrificed. But...you know that Uriel likes it, don't you? He cares more about who we screw than who we save. And you don't care about anything."

Electricity crackled through the air. "Or you're heartless, whatever. I know, you don't argue semantics with the monkeys," Sam amended. "I just wish...God. I just wanted this all to be more than a numbers game."

Something that might have been discomfort crossed Castiel's face. "God hasn't asked you not to save people," he said. "Far from it."

"Right. He just wants me to stand there holding our best weapon and not use it," Sam answered, waving an empty hand. "And that's not all of it. You keep torturing my brother."

"I'm fine, Sam," he interjected, because Sam didn't know jack about torture.

"You are the furthest thing in the world from fine, Dean. They threaten you with hell, they blackmail you with me, and it's—Christ, it's not mercilessness, it's cruelty." Sam nailed Castiel with a glare. "Are you holding Uriel's leash, or is it someone higher up? Because you can tell whoever's in charge that I will take _myself_ out of the equation before I let you use me to hurt him."

Castiel's expression turned inscrutable. "Suicide is the gravest of sins," he admonished. "It leads to damnation."

His pulse skyrocketed as he heard the screams of the damned again, smelled the ever-present sulfur. He'd never worked on a suicide; there was a separate place reserved for them. But Hell was still hell.

"And that's a problem why?" Sam sneered. "Did you promise Uriel he could do the honors?"

"Sam!" he barked with twenty years of _'don't run into traffic,' 'don't drop your guard,' 'don't jump out too soon'_ in his voice. Even Castiel blinked at him. "Don't taunt the sane angel, and don't ever think that again," he ordered.

"Don't you get it, Dean? They all think I'm going there anyway." The high pitch in his brother's voice revealed what he hadn't caught before—Sam was getting mad to keep from being afraid. "The only question in their minds is whether they catch me before I kill the magic number of people that makes them care."

"Big deal," he scoffed. "What do they know?"

"They're _angels_, Dean. Maybe they know a lot. Last night while you were, uh…," Sam cut himself off, arm jittering nervously at his side. "I was thinking last night. I haven't used my powers since Halloween, or, uh…been with Ruby since you came back. But Anna said the angels don't like me. Present tense. Uriel said he'll kill me _when_ I get to be too much trouble, not _if_. Could be that they know I'll—I'll turn, even if I don't want to."

"Drop the monkey semantics, Sam," he responded. "You should be glad that they're not keeping track of who you know in the Biblical sense." Next to him, Castiel glanced downward with his 'discomfort' face. He must've just committed blasphemy. Or sacrilege. Whatever.

Sam bit his lip. "Remember what I said, when Anna said the angels were threatening to send you back?"

'_Do you know a weapon that works on an angel?_' he heard in Sam's voice. 'Doesn't mean anything,' he wanted to say. Except, he still couldn't believe the thought had crossed Sam's mind.

"Yeah," Sam said, knowing his silence for what it was. "And I'd still do it, if that's what it took to stop them. So maybe it's already started. And that changes things, see?"

"Uh…no."

Sam looked away from him into the angel's opaque eyes. "The gospel of John, 15:13. 'There is no greater love than this, that a man lay down his life for another,'" he quoted. "Is that true, or did I believe the wrong Testament?"

"The word of the Lord is the greatest of truths," Castiel said with confusion, like Sam had switched to Farsi mid-sentence. "It cannot be doubted."

"And the sin of suicide is despair. If it's inevitable I'll become something I'm not, then laying down my life isn't despair, is it?" Sam shifted his eyes back and forth between the two of them, and the words rolled far too easily from his lips. "Maybe it'll matter to God that I'd rather die than—than hurt people, maybe it won't, but it would still be the right thing to do."

His skin crawled as he heard how neatly Sam made the argument, how effortlessly he cited chapter and verse. He remembered, not long after he'd gotten back, tossing Sam's Bible onto the bed to make room for a spellbook. It had fallen open to the gospel Sam had mentioned; he hadn't paid any attention at the time, but he'd bet it contained the passage his brother had just recited. The page had been well-worn, like it had been read again and again the past few months. Like Sam had been brooding over this for a long time.

"Sammy," he said through dry lips, "what were you thinking when I was gone?"

"That I was going to be a hunter, a Winchester, do you and Dad proud." Sam's eyes pleaded with him to understand. "I was sure using my powers was safe, but if I was wrong, well…Christ." He laughed bitterly. "You and me, Dean, we were never meant to die old. Guess that's why we didn't, huh?"

Castiel observed the exchange with vague interest. He liked the angel, even after tonight, but he wanted to sock him for watching Sam's breakdown like it was a National Geographic special on chimpanzees running wild in the Serengeti. Of course, there were worse ways for him to react if Sam's rant took off in the wrong direction.

He gripped his brother's shoulders and rotated him until his back was to the angel. "Sammy," he said calmingly, "you're freaking out, you're freaking _me_ out, and we're just going walk away now, okay?"

Castiel raised a staying hand. "Let him speak," he commanded, like they didn't all know that he couldn't shut Sam up with anything less than a tranquilizer gun and a roll of duct tape. Maybe the only surprise about Sam's meltdown was that it hadn't happened sooner.

"That's generous," Sam muttered; Castiel nodded at his back in response because, thank God, he hadn't fully gotten sarcasm yet. "You really want to hear it?" Sam asked, spinning around.

The angel tilted his head. "Yes."

"Fine." Sam seemed to marshal his words, then fired both barrels. "You're a footsoldier, aren't you, Castiel?" he asked. "But you would be a general now, if you had chosen differently."

The vessel's body went straight and tense, every trace of fatigue vanishing from his face. Diamond hardness replaced the vague benevolence in his eyes as the angel gritted out, "_If_."

"If," Sam repeated. "But when the angels picked sides in that first battle, you stayed loyal to God."

Castiel's expression didn't change, but he relaxed the body a little and waited for Sam to go on.

"Tell me, how long had you lived the day you walked away from Lucifer's offer?" Sam asked, keeping their gazes locked. "How old were your brothers who died the same day they chose faith over power?"

Castiel lowered his eyes. "Eons," he murmured. "Only eons."

Sam lifted his chin. "Do you know how old I was?"

He recoiled as his brother's question hung, cold and brutal, in the air. Saying nothing, Castiel returned his eyes to Sam's.

"Twenty-three," Sam told him. "Years, not eons. You'd think that would earn me the benefit of the angels' doubt. And Dean was twenty-nine when he—he did what he did to buy me back a few decades." Sam's voice broke. "John 15:13, but Dean's love was even greater, right? It never made sense that a contract with some demon bitch could outweigh that."

He fidgeted under Sam's words. The angel just listened, impassive and silent.

"When Dean was gone—maybe I should have thought about saving people more and revenge less, and yeah, I could have been a better man," Sam said, low and quick. "But I never cursed God, never stopped believing in him, and even after _everything_ was taken away from me, I never lost trust in him. I never stopped praying that I wasn't practicing lawlessness and he would know me on the last day. And now…"

Sam pressed his lips together in a tight half-smile, like he always did when he was holding back tears. "Now God's messengers know me as a pariah, and all I see in an angel is the lesser of two evils."

Castiel appeared perturbed. "The proof that angels are the antithesis of evil is branded on your brother's body, Sam," he said. "The denizens of hell can no more bear my touch than a demon can endure holy water."

_Jig's up_, he thought. Sam wasn't stupid: he'd put together the pieces from Castiel and Alistair and come up with the real picture. Rather than enduring eternal torment, his big brother had jumped onto the fast track in demon vocational school.

Except Sam didn't figure it out because he still had faith in the wrong thing—him.

"Dean, remember saying you didn't know why you deserved to be freed from hell when others weren't?" Sam asked. "I knew. The minute we found out God commanded it, I knew. But you would've gotten all squirrelly if I told you."

"John 15:13," he preempted to keep from hearing that word again.

"Exactly. When an angel brought you back it was like...like God and faith, _everything_, it all made sense."

Sam's face was lit up like when he'd first thought he'd seen an angel in the confused soul of a priest a couple years earlier, and he understood it little more now than he had then. If he was honest with himself, he'd admit that Sam's faith always unsettled him because it made his brother a stranger.

"But all they cared about was using you," Sam went on, the light vanishing. "If angels are good, Dean, then I can't recognize good anymore. And when I thought more about what I was going to do, I realized I might have passed the point of no return and never known it."

Sam looked Castiel straight in his unfathomable eyes. "I was going to kill an angel tonight," he said. "I bet that couldn't be forgiven for love."

"Sammy," he whispered.

"I'm sorry, Dean." Sam opened his arms like he had when he was defying Uriel to strike him down, except Sam wasn't calling a bluff. "If that's the sign to lay me to waste," he told the angel, "and if anything I've done has earned me the slightest favor from heaven, you'll do it now and deny that smug bastard the pleasure."

He grabbed Sam's jacket, desperate to haul this whipsawing conversation back to something rational. "Sam, are you crazy?" he hissed. "You don't know if you're right about any of this."

"But I know I can't go on with things the way they are now. I wish I could help you understand better." Sam fumbled for words to clarify the alien nuances of belief. "You know how you didn't think God existed until you saw an angel?" he tried.

"Yeah."

Sam smiled sadly and disengaged from his grasp. "The problem is, I already knew He did."

Sam stepped around him and straightened his back. "Either take me off the chessboard now, Castiel, or get the hell away from us and don't come back," he said. "Because I want to at least pretend to myself that I still believe God cares about the pawns, and I can't do it if I have to walk one more fucking step with angels."

Castiel rose. His eyes held the same expression they had when he looked at Anna—cool regret. "Come here, Samuel," he said, holding out his hand.

His brother gave him an anguished look. "I'm sorry, Dean," he whispered again, and stepped forward.

"Castiel, please," he begged. It wasn't too late for Sam; he didn't deserve to be struck down or teleported straight to hell. The angel responded with his 'baffled' face before he turned to his brother.

"You understand one thing about angels, Sam—we are limited beings," Castiel said, taking Sam's hand. "Uriel and I were created to be warriors; it is neither our task to minister nor in our nature to comfort. Those gifts are given to your own kind."

The gravelly voice was low and calm, and the angel looked wide-eyed and…earnest. Really, _really_ earnest. "It would be a tragedy if you lost the faith that Azazel and Lilith could not destroy," he said, "because you sought guidance from those with little ability to give it."

Sam looked down, blinking, as Castiel laid his other hand over their joined ones. He figured it out the same moment comprehension flashed over Sam's face: Castiel was trying to recreate the scene when he and Sam first met, when a handshake had relieved Sam's nervousness about meeting an angel.

"Most angels know little more of the mind of God than you do," Castiel went on. "And we have no foreknowledge of the fate of souls. Do you understand?"

Painfully fragile hope crossed Sam's face. "You're saying that I can still be saved?"

Castiel tightened his clasp. "No angel knows otherwise, and I pray that you will be."

Sam pulled his hand free and sank down on the bale of hay behind him. "Oh, God," he whispered. "Thank God."

"It is beyond my station to say more, but accept this angelic wisdom," Castiel said in a tone that sounded as close to kindness as he could achieve. "You must remember Solomon's teaching on pride."

"Pride goeth before destruction," Sam recited.

"And a haughty spirit before a fall. Remember it, not memorize it, or you _will_ fall." Castiel sat down as well. "And you have my word, Sam, the word of God's own messenger, that your loss would be seen and mourned throughout the heavens."

Sam's expression crumbled like the angel was gutting him in slow motion. "Because you'll lose a knight while the other side gains a king," he said dully, looking away.

"No, Sam. A sparrow," Castiel corrected gently. "Do you know the words of our Lord?"

Sam met the angel's eyes again and nodded, hope slowly flowing back to his face. The moment was so intimate that he wanted to be anywhere but there, but when he moved to leave, Sam shot him a glance begging him not to leave him alone with this sincere, compassionless creature.

"Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies?" Castiel asked, and screw it—they had all the privacy in the world if they kept speaking Bible instead of English.

"Yet not one of them is forgotten by God," Sam responded.

"Yes. The very hairs of your head are all numbered, so fear not." The rough voice was as cool as a judge's, as strong as a father's, as tender as a lover's. "There is neither knight nor king before the Father, but _you_, Samuel—you are worth more than many sparrows."

Sam buried his face in his hands, shuddering, and Castiel looked up. "As are you, Dean Winchester," he added implacably.

Swallowing, he turned away from the faint light outlining the angel's wings and the terrible strength in his eyes. He'd been wrong, so wrong to think that his brother's faith made his life easier.

Sam wiped at his nose with his sleeve. "Me, Dean, the sparrows are everyone," he said. "Does that mean I'm the same as anyone else?"

"You know the answer to that too." Castiel's tone was as inexorable as it was gentle. "Your spirit is human, Sam, but your blood is poison. If you open a chink to let that poison into your soul, it will not be purged easily, if at all."

Sam's hands shook. "I don't think I can do this," he said, the whites showing all around his eyes. _Panicking. This was Sam panicking._ "Dean—I can't do this."

Castiel watched with benign puzzlement, his comforting skills spent, as Sam covered his face once more. Guilt flowed like poison in his own veins as he watched his brother trembling under the fear of a never-ending struggle against damnation. Needing to at least protect Sam from the intrusion of that cool, assessing gaze, he caught Castiel's eyes and motioned toward the door with his chin. The angel looked at the door, and then blankly back to him.

He gritted his teeth. "Could I talk to you outside, please?"

Castiel nodded like he was filing the cue away for future reference. "Yes," he said, standing.

"Thanks, Castiel," Sam mumbled, startling them both.

The angel looked down as if he hadn't learned the response to those words yet. "I'll pray for you, Sam Winchester," he promised again. "And if I must strike you down, I'll pray for you even as I deliver the blow."

"That's, uh...," Sam cleared his throat. "That'd be great."

Castiel took a few steps toward the door, then stopped. "The question you didn't ask, Sam," he said without turning.

Sam looked up. "Yeah?"

"The answer is 'no.' Not even for an instant." The angel looked over his shoulder, but not enough for them to see his face. "Power holds no temptation for me."

He sat down in the spot Castiel had vacated as soon as the angel was gone. "Sammy?"

"I'm okay," Sam told him. "Just a little…overwhelmed."

"Yeah." He rubbed his brother's back. "I didn't know if you needed a Kleenex or a cigarette after the swallow thing."

"Sparrow." Sam smiled weakly and snuffled. "Remember me saying I could have been Max, if our dad had been like his?" he asked.

"Yeah," he answered. Sometimes, at least, he and Sam still understood each other without words.

"But Dad was Dad, so I wasn't Max. I didn't go into this without thinking, you know," Sam said, resting his elbows on his knees. "I found six others with demon blood, most with stronger abilities than mine, and not one of them went bad before Azazel screwed with their heads. Even Jake was a good guy until Azazel convinced him his only choice was power or death."

His brother looked steadily at him, letting him search his face for the truth. "The suicide thing was a worst-case scenario, I swear. I couldn't handle killing demons' hosts when there was an alternative, and with Azazel gone, I thought using my powers was safe."

Not so much as a ping on his Sam-lie-detector test, but the 'Sam has no sense' klaxon was sounding loud and clear. "You had to know it might be a risk," he pointed out.

"Not really. I still had you." Sam smiled at him, innocent and serene. "You'd've kicked my ass if I'd ended up downstairs anyway. I wasn't going to let that happen."

He jerked away, his entire being cringing from the image. They would have sent his brother to his workspace first, no doubt about it. And God help him…he would have done it.

"Dean?" Sam asked.

He cleared his throat. "It's cool."

"Castiel isn't going to hang around forever. You should go," Sam told him after a few seconds. "I'm fine."

This time he couldn't tell if his brother was lying, but he was right. "We'll talk about this later," he said.

Sam half-sniffed, half-chuckled. "Yeah, we'll put it on the list."

"Right." He clapped Sam's shoulder and headed out, pushing away the knowledge that it was time to tell Sam about the things he'd sworn his brother would never know.

_

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Additional author's notes_:  
Sam's line about God favoring humans above angels comes from Pico della Mirandola's "Oration on the Dignity of Man" (written in AD 1496). The verses on the sparrows are in Luke 12:6-8, and Sam also references Matthew 7:22-23: "Many will say to Me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.'"

Comments are welcome, and all my stories—including slash that isn't posted here—may be found at my lj, linked through my homepage.


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